Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause.
The pride of men will not often suffer reason to have scope until it can be no longer of service.
To reach the height of our ambition is like trying to reach the rainbow; as we advance it recedes.
If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
Not men but measures a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honorable engagement.
Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils.
Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.
A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is torn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion.
A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.
Crimes lead into one another. They who are capable of being forgers, are capable of being incendiaries.
Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure.
The parties are the gamesters; but government keeps the table, and is sure to be the winner in the end.
True humility-the basis of the Christian system-is the low but deep and firm foundation of all virtues.
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new compositions, any bungler can add to the old.
If we owned the property, we will be free and prosperous. If so they regain control, we will become poor
Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
Man is by his constitution a religious animal; atheism is against not only our reason, but our instincts.
There is a time when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will neither draw reverence nor obtain protection.
To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to deprecate the value of freedom itself.
Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.
A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.
He only deserves to be remembered by posterity who treasures up and preserves the history of his ancestors.
It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.
The method of teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is incomparably the best.
I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets.
Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.
There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear.
They [Americans] augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.
People must be taken as they are, and we should never try make them or ourselves better by quarreling with them.
I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pain of others
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.
Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.
All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.
Greater mischief happens often from folly, meanness, and vanity than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition.
Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy of superstition.
The same sun which gilds all nature, and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine upon disappointed ambition.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.
The more accurately we search into the human mind, the stronger traces we everywhere find of his wisdom who made it.
General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked.
Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.
And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.
The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!